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"No matter what treatment you avail of and no matter what medications you take for your asthma, as long as you continue to overbreathe, you will continue to have asthma."

This book is about taking control of your asthma safely and without the need for medication. You will read about how I transformed myself from an acute asthmatic with a permanent illness requiring daily drug intake - and hospitalisation from time to time - to a virtual non-asthmatic who is totally free from asthma symptoms, attacks? and medication.

This non-medical treatment is based on the life's work of Russian respiratory physiologist, Professor Konstantin Buteyko, who developed a programme of exercises to foster correct breathing. The Buteyko Breathing Method is based on bodily processes, not on a placebo or any other effect. All persons with asthma can learn it and use it; the method is very simple, will entail minimum disruption to your life, and you will notice an improvement in as little as seven days.

Asthma was diagnosed when I was very young. Initially my condition was mild and consisted of just occasional wheezing and breathlessness. The treatment consisted of using an Intal inhaler. I only had an attack occasionally, so my asthma didn't really disrupt my life.

When I reached the age of ten, my asthma deteriorated so I was prescribed a Ventolin inhaler which guaranteed me immediate relief from the symptoms. I had to take a Uniphyiulum tablet each night as well. At the time, just one puff of Ventolin dealt with any breathing difficulty I experienced. My asthma was under control.

With the best of intentions, our doctor told my mother that children with asthma very often 'grow out of it' during their teenage years. Time and time again, I was assured that this should happen, and it offered a ray of hope for me, but this hope was never realised. As I grew into adulthood, the dose needed to maintain control of my asthma increased. One puff of Ventolin per day was no longer enough. Soon I was taking two, five, eight and even ten puffs a day.

One weekend, when I was in my early twenties, I was brought to James Connolly Memorial Hospital with an asthma attack, and I was told that I was being treated for acute asthma. Two weeks of large doses of oral steroids later, I returned home.

As the years passed, the amount of medication I needed continued to increase.It seemed to me that I was going steadily downhill, and I became gradually more concerned about the effect that the increasing levels of medication might be having on my asthma, general health and well-being.

Many people with asthma can relate to this summary of the steady progression of the condition. What starts off as an occasional wheeze soon develops into continuous asthma symptoms; while one puff of medication deals with asthma symptoms in the early stages, dependency on medication increases remorselessly.

The first indication I had that there was a viable alternative to taking a Ventolin inhaler in secret arrived in my early twenties, when I happened upon an article in the Irish Independent newspaper about a breathing therapy developed by a Russian professor which seemed to be effective in helping people with asthma. Over the years, I had already tried acupuncture, Chinese herbs, deep-breathing exercises and indeed any other therapy that I felt might help. When the Buteyko Breathing Method was featured in a magazine article shortly afterwards, I decided to find out more.

I started my search for knowledge by contacting Buteyko practitioners from around the world via the Internet. I learned as much as possible about the application of the therapy and I purchased the limited publications and videos available at the time. I taught myself the technique, used it intensively, and I was pleasantly surprised at the rapid effect it had on my asthma. Intuitively, I felt that I understood the significance of Professor Buteyko's work? even before I began applying it.

In a matter of months, my asthma improved so dramatically that I could reduce my medication intake significantly. As my condition continued to improve and my medication intake continued to decrease, I felt that for the first time in my life my asthma was under control. The bonus for me was that I had achieved this myself. My days of secretly puffing Ventolin were behind me.

Elixir of life

Take a breath now, and think about it carefully. Breathing is the elixir of life. More than that, breathing is life. We humans can live without water for days and without food for weeks, but we cannot live without air for more than a few minutes. Think about how we Westerners view food and water: we know that the quantity and quality of food and water we consume determines our state of health. We know that having too little means starvation or dehydration, and that too much leads to obesity and other health problems.

Why then does the quantity and quality of our breathing receive so little attention? Surely breathing, which is so immediately essential to life, must meet certain conditions? Why have other cultures, particularly in the Eastern world, recognised the importance of correct breathing to health for thousands of years, when we clearly don't?

What is asthma?

There is no universally accepted definition of asthma. The Concise Oxford Dictionary describes it as "a disease of respiration characterised by difficult breathing, cough etc.". Any good medical book will describe it in more technical terms but 'difficult breathing' is the part with which any asthma sufferer is familiar, even if it varies from mildly uncomfortable to life-threatening. Asthma is news now. There was a dramatic increase in asthma in the late twentieth century to the extent that an estimated 100 to 150 million people in the world are now affected by it, but it is not a recent phenomenon. (1)

The term "asthma" is a Greek translation of gasping or panting, and the problem was treated as far back as 2000 BC by Chinese doctors with the herb Ma Huang. The first known recording of the symptoms was about 3,500 years ago in an ancient Egyptian manuscript called Ebers Papyrus. Throughout the ages, asthma has received varying degrees of attention; the symptoms and their accompanying anxiety have been described by many prominent historical figures, including the famous Greek physician, Hippocrates.

Over the centuries, there has been an assortment of different theories about the causes of asthma, and so an eclectic range of remedies has been advised, including horse riding, strong coffee, tobacco, faith healing, chloroform and even drinking the blood of owls in wine, as practised by the ancient Romans.

It was not until the eighteenth century that Lavoisier provided the first real account of the functioning of the lungs, thereby providing the basis of modern-day understanding of the respiratory system and asthma. Prior to this, it was commonly believed that air was drawn into the lungs to cool the body. Lavoisier's contribution was that air is drawn in to be converted to energy by the metabolism, and that carbon dioxide and heat are produced as end products of the process. Lavoisier's work recognised that oxygen is essential to sustaining life.

Asthma now affects more people throughout the world, particularly in more developed countries, than at any other time in evolution. It inflicts greater economic and social damage in Western Europe than either TB or HIV, according to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) April 2002 report on the links between ill health in children and the deteriorating environment.

The position in selected developed countries may be summed up as follows (all figures are approximate):

	Asthma Diagnosed (millions)	Population (millions)	%
USA (2)	20	285	7.0
UK (3)	5.1	60	8.5
Australia (4)	2	19	10.5
Ireland (5)	0.3	3.9	7.7

 

According to the 1998 International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC), the countries with the highest twelve-month incidence of asthma were the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland followed by North, Central and South America. The same report found that the lowest rates were in centres in several Eastern European countries, followed by Indonesia, Greece, China, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, India and Ethiopia. Other studies show that the rate of asthma among rural Africans who migrate to cities and adopt a more 'western' urbanised lifestyle increases dramatically. According to the UCB Institute of Allergy in Belgium, the incidence of asthma in Western Europe has doubled in the last ten years. (1)

In the Western world, asthma crosses all class, race, geography and gender boundaries. Although it causes persistent asthma symptoms among seventy per cent of all people diagnosed with it, asthma causes only minor discomfort to the majority. In fact, some of the most influential people of our time in all walks of life were asthmatic, including Russian Tzar Peter the Great, actors Liza Minnelli, Jason Alexander and Elizabeth Taylor, revolutionary Che Guevara, and former US presidents John F Kennedy, Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt. All these have lived life to the full or are still living it.

What are the symptoms?

Asthma consists of inflammation, tightening and swelling of the airways in the respiratory system, resulting in obstruction of the flow of air to and from the lungs. The symptoms of asthma include breathlessness, wheezing, coughing and chest tightness. Sufferers may also have a blocked nose and hay fever, or rhinitis. The symptoms and their severity are peculiar to the individual, and they vary from season to season and according to the individual's susceptibility to a wide range of triggers.

An 'asthma attack' is the term used to describe an episode of breathing difficulty. In some cases, this may follow exposure to a specific trigger, such as dust, pollen, or certain foods. In other cases there appears to be no particular trigger. Some people have a cough and no wheeze, while others may have a wheeze and very little coughing, but each case is accompanied by some level of breathing difficulty. Symptoms may occur periodically, on a day-to-day or season-to-season basis, or they may be more or less continuous.

A 'trigger' is something that makes asthma worse. The most common triggers include (in alphabetical order): allergies; cigarette smoking (and cigarette smoke for non-smokers); colds and 'flu; cold air; dust mites; exercise under certain circumstances; moulds; noxious fumes; pollens; stress, and weather types such as fog and damp. In some instances an asthma attack may be triggered by a combination of catalysts. Anxiety can be caused by the variations on the asthma theme, particularly where a child is involved.

There is also a wide variety in the symptoms of asthma. The following is a list of those most commonly experienced by sufferers.

Wheeze

Breathlessness

Coughing

Chest tightness

Frequent yawning

Non-asthmatics can, of course, observe these symptoms, but they will not appreciate the feelings of tension, panic, uncertainty and helplessness which accompany them, particularly when the asthmatic struggles to breathe. If you are not an asthmatic, imagine trying to breathe while a pillow is being pressed firmly over your face. That feeling you imagine is the feeling someone with asthma has during an attack. In your case, the imaginary pillow can be easily removed to allow you to breathe effortlessly; for an asthmatic, the remedy is not so simple.

Given the variety of symptoms and their severity, diagnosing a condition that has no commonly accepted definition is not an exact science. Many asthma symptoms are also the symptoms of other conditions, such as chronic bronchitis or bronchiectasis, for example. Diagnosis has to take into account the chronic nature of asthma and the constriction of the airways due to inflammation by various cells and chemicals. Generally, diagnosis of asthma is based on the following factors.

History of the patient

Lung function tests

Effect of reliever or steroidal medication

Provocation test

Skin tests to determine allergies

Chest x-ray

Your respiratory system

The volume of air we inhale and exhale is measured in litres, and measurements are usually taken over one minute. In conventional medicine, the accepted number of breaths a healthy person takes in one minute is ten to twelve, with each breath drawing in a volume of 500 millilitres. In a full minute, this provides the body with a total volume of five to six litres. If a person is breathing at a higher rate of twenty breaths, for example, then the volume will also be higher, and vice-versa. To visualise this amount of air, imagine how much air would be contained in a two-litre soft drink bottle.

Where to now?

A new beginning is emerging in the treatment of asthma, aimed at getting to the root cause of the problem. By addressing the cause rather than the symptoms that are the effect, sufferers finally have the ability to be able to take control of their own condition, naturally and permanently. This new beginning is based on the life's work of Russian scientist, Professor Konstantin Buteyko. Before we can begin to look at how you can change your own life, we must take a brief look at his.

Over four decades, Professor Buteyko completed pioneering work on illnesses which develop as a result of breathing a volume of air greater than the body requires. His work provided mankind with probably the greatest discovery to date in the field of medicine.

As a medical student, Konstantin observed hundreds of sick patients, and realised that their breathing was closely related to the extent of their illness. The greater the volume of air which a patient inhaled, the greater their sickness, he discovered. This relationship was so precise that he was able to predict accurately the exact time when ill patients would pass away.

Through his research, he devised a breathing programme for his patients based on reducing the amount of air that passed through their lungs. When each patient applied reduced breathing, all their bodily functions including pulse, volume of breathing per minute and blood pressure were monitored. The resulting data enabled him to refine and improve his method. Buteyko's theory is based on the life force of any organism: breathing.

Although research conducted in Russia in 1962 proved unequivocally the soundness of Buteyko's method, it was not until 1983 that the Committee on Inventions and Discoveries formally acknowledged his work. This recognition was backdated to January 29th, 1962. That backdating alone begs the question: if Konstantin Buteyko's discovery had been acknowledged earlier, how many more ill people would have been helped?

The first trials held in the Western world were at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane in 1995. After three months, the Buteyko group had seventy per cent less symptoms, ninety per cent less need for reliever medication and forty-nine per cent less need for steroids. Furthermore, those who corrected their breathing the most reduced their symptoms and need for medication the most. An article published in Australian Doctor on April 7th, 1995 was headed 'Doctors gasp at Buteyko success'.

In the forty-odd years since Buteyko's discovery, it has improved the health and saved the lives of many thousands of people. Now that his enlightening revelation is becoming better known in the Western world, it will improve the health and save the lives of many more. You could be one of them.